One Hell of a Ride
by jryu0620
Summary: SEASON 9 SPOILERS! Sam got his wish. He got his brother back. Now, he has to deal with consequences 10x more fucked up than he ever expected. Castiel has been handed the unwanted task of leader and must help the angels rebuild heaven. Rated M for language and violence. Takes place after season 9. Canon.
1. Chapter 1

I'm shaking as I write this.

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Disclaimer: SPN isn't mine nor are the characters.

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SPOV

_I'm proud of us._

"Crowley," Sam called through gritted teeth for the ninth time. Where was he? He stared, hands on his thighs at the mess of s spell in front of him.

A knock came from behind him and he turned.

"Crowley," Sam gasped, stumbling as he got up from the ground. "Dean..."

His voice broke. His brother was lying on his bed in his room and he wasn't breathing. Quite the contrary, he was white; ghost white with lips blue and blood splattered on his face.

"Yes, I know," Crowley said, hands behind his back. He began leisurely pacing. "You want him back."

Sam nodded minutely, his eyes following Crowley's movements.

He needed his brother back. Sam was a liar, a petty child in a man's body. He _would_ do the same. He would do what it took to get Dean back.

He only wished his brother had died knowing that.

_I'm proud of us._

"What do I need to do?" Sam asked. There was a price. There was always a price and he would pay it.

"Nothing," Crowley said flippantly, fiddling with a shelf.

Sam narrowed his eyes. "Bullshit. What do I need to do?"

"Nothing," Crowley reiterated, piking a random item off the shelf and setting it back down.

Sam raised his eyebrows, arm twitching for the angel blade. If Crowley wouldn't do it by choice, he would make him do it.

"Except," Crowley said, turning on his heels to face him. "Maybe be a little... understanding."

Sam looked at him. "What?"

"Come," Crowley ordered, exiting. Sam followed Crowley to Dean's room.

"So you'll help?" Sam asked, looking for confirmation. What was Crowley doing?

"I don't have to," Crowley answered. Sam raised his eyebrows again. What the fuck was he talking about?

"What do you mean-"

"Just look," Crowley cut him off, jabbing his thumb towards the inside of Dean's room.

And there he saw, in the middle of the room where his dead brother should have been, Dean sitting in his bed, staring at his arm at the Mark of Cain.

His head lifted slowly and Sam's arm automatically reached for his blade when he saw black eyes.

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WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO UNTIL FALL?


	2. Chapter 2

I'm just gonna see how far I get tonight.

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Disclaimer: SPN and it's character aren't mine.

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DPOV

Dean contemplated shoving the First Blade into his chest. It wouldn't work, but it might make him feel better.

"What the fuck did you do?" Sam asked, spinning around and slamming Crowley against the wall. His blade was in hand and he had Crowley pinned at the throat.

"I didn't do anything," Crowley insisted. "Not recently. Granted, I did urge him to receive the Mark of Cain, but I didn't know _this_ would happen. I knew it was a possibility. _Not_ a certainty."

Sam sputtered,. "You _knew _Dean could turn into a demon and you-"

"Hey," Dean said in a harsh tone. "I'm still here and we've got a bigger problem than Crowley not mentioning possible demon-ification."

Sam pushed harder on Crowley's neck for a brief moment before letting him go.

"Thanks," Crowley muttered, rubbing his throat. Sam looked at Dean, waiting for him to speak.

"How the fuck are we gonna kill me?" Dean asked. Sam's eyes widened.

"What?" Sam asked. He was going to be difficult. "No! We're gonna- we're gonna cure you. Remember? Human blood?"

Oh, he remembered. It was the first thing he'd remembered when Crowley had told him. If only it was that simple.

"Tell him," Dean spit out the command to Crowley, "Tell him what you told me before you went to go get him."

Crowley crossed his arms as he spoke. "You get rid of the demon, you get rid of Dean. He'll die."

Silence for a minute as Sam took the new problem and weighed their options.

"So that's it?" Sam asked, looking between them both. "There's no cure?"

"No," Dean said, bitterly.

There was no cure and now he was exactly what he hated. He was no better now then the scum he'd spent his whole life trying to clear from the Earth. He might as well have killed his mother, Jessica, any of the thousands of others that had been killed by a demon. He wasn't any better.

"Exorcism," he said, asking Crowley, "Will it work?"

"Possibly," Crowley said, contemplating. "Not advised, of course. I was under the impression that the goal was to keep you here on Earth."

"Wait," Sam said, standing at the bedpost. "Hold on here, Dean. This is- we're- we're talking about your life."

"My life," Dean scoffed, glancing again at the fucking Mark of Cain. If he ever found Cain… "I'm a demon! What am I gonna do? Be a demon that hunts demons?"

Sam shrugged, clueless of how to respond. "I don't know. It worked for Ruby."

"Ruby was bitch," Dean spit. He wouldn't be anything like her. "I'd rather have died a hero than lived to see myself become a villain."

"Are you quoting Batman?" Crowley asked with a slightly amused expression. Of course he was amused right now. Dean glared at him.

"Not the time," Dean growled at him before addressing Sam again. "I'd rather that. Too late now isn't it? I am the villain! I'm the monster children tell their parents about at night. I thought I'd hit rock bottom before... No. This is it. I'm a fucking demon and I'll go back to hell where I fucking belong."

"Dean," Sam said, trying to reason with him. Sam was gonna talk him out of this. "If I was a demon, would you send me straight to hell?"

Dean faltered. He wouldn't. Even now as a demon, he wouldn't.

"Not the same," he argued, shaking his head. Sam wasn't going to play this fucking card with him. Not now. Not while he was a demon.

"The hell it's not!" Sam objected. "It's exactly the same. I said I wouldn't do anything to get you back and I lied. You are back and you are staying."

Dean shook his head. How was he going to convince his little brother to find a way to kill him?

"Dean," Sam said, gripping his brother by the neck. "We can fix this."

"It was gonna happen eventually, Sammy," Dean said. He belonged to hell. And maybe, deep down, he knew that.

"Not yet," Sam reassured his brother. "Not yet and not like this."

Dean looked at Sam for a minute, teeth clenched.

_Damn it, _he thought, nodding in defeat. Sam's shoulders sagged in relief

"How touching," Crowley interrupted, sitting down in the chair in the corner. "Now that that's settled, Moose, you might want to notify your angel."

_Shit,_ Dean thought. Did Cas know what was going on? Did he know what had happened? What had happened upstairs? They didn't even know if he was okay.

"Why doesn't Dean do it?" Sam asked, getting to his feet. Dean almost smacked him over the head.

"Have you ever seen a demon pray?" Crowley countered, mirroring Dean's thoughts. Sam looked at Dean, like he was just realizing again that his brother was a demon, swallowed, and nodded before sitting at the edge of Dean's bed, hands intertwined in prayer.

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More to come tonight? Maybe?


	3. Chapter 3

I'm so proud of myself right now.

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CAPOV

Castiel frowned as he heard Sam's prayer.

It shoved one detail at him that he wished to forget.

Dean.

Dean was gone.

He'd worked so hard to save him and he'd failed.

"Hannah," Cas said, drawing her attention to him. She'd been talking to a few others. "I must take my leave."

"What?" she said, panicked. She spun, abandoning her conversation with them. "You can't. Who'll lead us?"

"I don't know," Castiel said. He was tired of rehashing this argument. He was not leader. He couldn't be. Whenever he tried, the results were miserable. "But I'm no leader."

Hannah looked around desperately for a second. "But you are."

Cas shook his head. "You need a better leader than one who will drop whatever he's doing when he's called upon by one human."

He saw the knowledge sink in and watched the change of intensity in her eyes. She was smart. She could see reason. She wouldn't make too bad of a leader herself.

"Goodbye, Hannah."

Cas transported himself to the bunker and he fell against the side of the table. He rested for a bit, holding his knees. Metatron was right. Hannah was right. The grace inside of him was burning away, taking him with it. He needed _his_ grace.

"Sam?" Cas called tiredly, lifting his head.

"In here!" he called. Cas straightened himself and walked towards the bedrooms.

Odd. He didn't sound as distraught as Cas had expected. Had he already made one of his stupid deals to bring Dean back? What had it cost him?

The Winchester boys were always fighting to cheat death on behalf of the other. One of these days, it wasn't going to work.

"Cas," Sam greeted outside Dean's room. He was blocking the doorway. His eyes looked deranged almost. Understandable, considering he'd just lost his brother, but still a bit too crazy.

"Sam," Cas said sadly, reaching up to grab his shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, about that-"

"What did you do?" he asked exasperatedly, tilting his head to the side, his hand sliding off his shoulder. Why was he even mildly surprised?

"_I_ didn't do anything," Sam said, raising his hands.

"Right," he said, nodding disbelievingly. "So why are you nervous?"

Sam evaded his question. Cas stood, waiting for an explanation that didn't come.

"Don't freak out," Sam finally said, stepping to the side.

The second Cas stepped into the room he sensed an imbalance. Crowley was in the corner of the room to his displeasure. But that wasn't it. Something was off. But then, to his surprise, he saw Dean, standing and walking and not in any way dead.

"Dean," Cas said, happy to see him up. He was covered in blood and looked seriously beat up but he was up. Had Metatron been lying? He embraced him in a hug. Dean stayed stock-still.

"Dean, what did you do?" Cas asked, horrified, pulling back almost immediately. He kept a hand on his shoulder.

Castiel could feel it. He felt the demonic presence inside of him, newly churning and not yet settled.

Dean was a demon.

The human that he'd tried so hard to protect was a demon.

"Cas," Dean said resignedly, ready to explain.

"Let's uh..." Crowley said, "give 'em a minute."

Sam looked between the two of them before nodding and following Crowley out the door. Cas looked at Dean, expecting him to speak. Dean sat on the bed, his hand stroking his chin.

"Mark of Cain," Dean said as a simple explanation. It was a bitter explanation, as it should have been.

Cas was unable to form words. Dean didn't deserve this. Dean deserved heaven. He deserved a happy ending and the finest that heaven could offer. Dean deserved a break from his hardships and long years of baggage and guilt.

He didn't deserve to be a demon.

He. Did. Not. Deserve. Hell.

"It didn't want to let go. No way of getting rid of the demon without getting rid of me. I'm stuck like this, Cas," Dean said, his voice breaking slightly.

Cas tried to think of a solution and came up dry.

Cas observed Dean. He was demon, but he was still... Dean. Demons lost their humanity and maybe over time Dean would too. But for now, Dean was still Dean.

He hugged him again and this time Dean hugged him back. Cas didn't bother trying to stop the slight pooling of tears. "I'm glad you aren't dead."

"I can't say the same," Dean muttered.

Cas hadn't failed, not necessarily. Dean wasn't dead.

He just had to find a way to raise him up to heaven.

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I'll probably have to go back and edit this tomorrow. ugh.


	4. Chapter 4

DPOV

"God dammit!" Dean hissed, watching as smoke billowed from his hand. "Who spilled salt on the table?"

"Sorry," Sam said from the other side of the table. Dean grimaced before going back to research. How did you even go about researching this?

This was new.

They needed Cain, that's what they needed. Cain wanted to die. Well, he wasn't going to get it without telling him how to get out of this mess.

Cas threw a book onto the table and leaned back in exhaustion. Crowley was flipping threw a book on the other see of the room. It would have been funny if not for the situation.

"This is hopeless," Dean said, closing his laptop. They were never going to find anything. Sam stared at him blankly.

"Dean, we've been searching for two days!"

"And you know what could have happened these past two days?" Dean asked. "People are busy, man. Cas, you should be in heaven!" He gestured at the angel, who was looking at him with an annoyed expression.

"The King of Hell," he pointed at Crowley, "should be running Hell. There are people that are dying out there and we're sitting around looking for a cure that doesn't exist!"

"We have to try, Dean," Sam said, closing his laptop as well.

"The only person that could even possibly help us is Cain or... or God himself," Dean said. He almost laughed at the notion that God would help him.

"There you go," Sam said.

"We could find God?" Cas asked. Because that had worked so well the last time.

"No," Sam said. "We could track Cain down. You've done it before."

"It's not that simple," Crowley said.

"We were looking for the first blade and it lead to him," Dean told him. "Wasn't the same."

"And even if it were," Crowley said, pushing himself out of his seat. "The person who had the spell is dead."

"He gave you no information on how to find him?" Cas asked. His eyebrows were furrowed in concern, his hand resting on the table.

"No," Dean said. "Dude said he wanted me to kill him and he'd call me when he was ready. Then he zapped us out and massacred some demons."

Is that what they had to do then? They had to wait for Cain to feel like dying?

He could feel it. He could feel the demonic presence inside of him and it didn't even feel weird. He hated it. He'd been possessed before. This wasn't that. He just felt... powerful, like he had when he was alive with the Mark.

How far was he going to let this go? When would he finally just become a demon? No sympathy, no remorse, no mercy. No emotion.

"Dean!" Sam called.

"Yeah."

"I've called your name five times." He raised his eyebrow at Dean, asking if he was okay.

Dean shrugged and said, "Go on."

"What you want to do?" Sam sat forward, elbows on the table and hands intertwined over his mouth.

"I don't know, man!" Dean said in frustration. "What _can_ we do?"

He had his answer and he knew everyone else had come to the same conclusion: nothing. If only they'd come to the conclusion 36 hours ago.

"So it seems," Crowley said, "that you will be staying like this for the foreseeable future."

Dean frowned, growling in frustration. Crowley pushed himself out of his chair and walked to the table, opposite of Dean.

"Perhaps you'd like to learn how to be a demon."

"What's there to _learn_? How to kill people? Newsflash: I know how to do that," he snapped.

Crowley smiled, unshaken by Dean's attitude. "There's more to being a demon than killing."

Dean scoffed. He was not going to learn how to be a demon. "I'll figure it out."

"Dean," Cas said. "You should… learn about being a…" He didn't finish his sentence, gesturing at him instead, as if he couldn't say the word demon. Dean could barely say it either The fact that Cas was here almost surprised him, but that was what family was for. He, however, did not need "How-To-Be-A-Demon" tutorials.

"It ain't complicated, Cas," Dean said.

"Really," Cas asked, raising an eyebrow. Dean nodded. "Then transport to the other side of the room."

Dean stared blankly at him.

_Fuck._


	5. Chapter 5

(A/N)

Yeah. Sorry I've been busy with the end of school.

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Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or the characters in it.

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CAPOV

Demons, according to what Crowley said, normally formed with the knowledge of how to… for lack of better phrasing, be a demon. Centuries of torture burned the humanity out of them. Instant demonification hadn't done Dean any favors on the knowledge front. He did, however, get the hang of it quickly. Very, very quickly.

To Cas' amusement, even Crowley seemed surprised. Transport was accomplished with ease. He'd even picked up telekinesis and approving.

"So Cas," Sam said in an attempt to make conversation, "What happened in heaven?"

Cas sighed and launched into the story. A quarter of the way through the story, Dean and Crowley abandoned "training" to listen.

Cas swallowed when he'd finished and looked at Dean sadly. If he'd just been faster, Dean wouldn't be in this situation. Thirty seconds earlier and Dean would be fine. He'd be human.

"So Metatron isn't dead?" Dean confirmed, anger making his voice tense. Cas nodded. "Then what the hell did I die for?"

"Dean, the angels had a problem with-"

"Killing?" Sam guessed, cutting him off. Cas didn't have to nod for them to know that Sam was right.

Dean drew in a breath, trying to keep himself calm. It didn't work and when he spoke, he spoke with a sneer. "Metatron was the reason for that _whole goddamn mess_ and we're just gonna let the son of a bitch live?"

"He's locked in prison, the prison that had held Gadreel for millennia." Cas said. A rush of fatigue surged through him, remembering that Gadreel, mislead, misunderstood and well-meaning as he was, was dead. It was never a happy day when an angel died. "There isn't really anywhere for him to go."

"He should have to pay for his actions," Dean reasoned, sneer still present. "He should be dead.

Cas shook his head. "I'm sick of killing," he said quietly. And he was. He was tired of the "necessary" evil.

Dean's expression flickered and Sam cut in before he had a chance to respond. "Aren't we all? Cas, Metatron deserves to die. He's the reason heaven fell."

"The angels won't allow it," Cas said firmly. "And even if they would, it's better punishment for him to wallow in jail. He won't be getting out anytime soon."

"And you know that how?" Dean asked. Crowley snorted. "What?"

"How stupid can you possibly be?" Crowley asked. "The only reason Gadreel got out was because the angels fell. I doubt he'll be around."

"He won't be getting out," Cas reiterated, for once agreeing with the King of Hell. Crowley glanced over at him and Cas returned his look with a glare.

Dean and Sam looked tensely at Cas until, finally, Sam nodded and his shoulders relaxed fractionally. Dean held his stiff position for a minute more before following suit.

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There was always a dull buzzing in the back of Cas's head, the voices of a thousands angels resonating through his head. That dull buzzing was becoming, steadily, more of a dull roar.

There was mass hysteria in heaven and through the chaos were cries for a leader.

Cas couldn't be a leader... but he could help. Then he glanced at Dean and reasoned that Dean needed him more than heaven did.

He wished there was a way for him to silence voices. He ignored it, letting it become an uncomfortable buzz in the back of his mind, listening to Dean and Sam talk.

"-case," Sam was saying. Dean's laptop was open and he was

"The hell we can't," Dean argued. "What else are we gonna do?"

_Ah_, Cas thought, grasping the subject of their conversation. Dean wanted to solve a case.

Sam hesitated. "Are you sure you're up for it?"

Dean nodded and Sam reluctantly agreed. "Alright then. What is it?"

Cas got up from his seat so he could read over Dean's shoulder. He had an article up on his laptop.

"Seems Crowley ain't doing such a good job controlling Hell" Dean said. Crowley raised an eyebrow. "Seven dead in a diner in Rupert, Idaho."

They all turned to Crowley, who seems unfazed. "I don't control their every move. They're demons. Killing is in the handbook," Crowley defended after a good thirty seconds of being stared at.

"And exorcising them is in ours," Dean said, bristling at the mention of "demons" and "killing".

Crowley kept a nearly blank expression but he could see the amusement in his eyes.

Cas hated Crowley. He hated Crowley with a passion. Part of that hate was that he was a demon. The other half of that hatred, while expressed towards the demon, was more actually anger at himself. Cas hated himself; hated his weakness and his naive attempt to make heaven better by teaming up with hell's spawn. Crowley's appearance was a bitter reminder of why he couldn't be a ruler.

Why Crowley was even still around was a mystery to him.

Why wasn't he in hell, wreaking havoc, torturing kittens, doing whatever it was that he did? What did he care if Dean knew how to be a demon?

"So we going to Idaho?" Dean asked, grabbing his jacket.

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(A/N)

I suck at updating, just so you know.


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